Day 8

One week. All is good. It's easier than I thought, it just requires conscious effort on my part.

On the little chore chart that I made, I left a square open at the end of each week. If I successfully put all my clothes away each evening (allowing for certain adjustments), I get a gold star. Can I tell you, it was really fun to give myself a gold star today! I can't even remember the last time I got a gold star for anything. I was probably drinking apple juice and eating Tam Tams at the time.

I can do this for another week, though my intention is to keep taking it one day at a time. Seeing that I knocked a week out like that gives me faith that I can repeat it. But, as I said yesterday, it also gives me some perspective on how long this process takes and how much more I want to change.

I started working on the backlog today, just a little. I don't even know if "backlog" is the right word--this particular pile was made up of the laundry that didn't get put away since...a somewhat embarrassingly long time ago.

I did the laundry last week, but my husband took over and not all of it made it back into our apartment from the communal laundry room. On Sunday night I was fishing around my drawer for a pair of shorts and I couldn't find any. Suddenly it dawned on me that a whole load of laundry might be floating around our building unmonitored, making trouble.

Luckily I found everything waiting cheerfully for me in a bin in the laundry room. I promptly gathered it up and dumped it on my bedroom floor. Where it sat for eight days. I had plenty of "good reasons" not to put it away right away, and when I started my new habit chart I didn't count the laundry as clothing that needed to be put away on a particular day because I hadn't actually worn it (pretty smart, huh?). But today I decided to throw one of my "Ten Minute Miracles" at the pile, and everything got folded and put away in just about no time flat. It made such a big difference to the room, and took so little effort!

I'll talk more about the theory of the Ten Minute Miracle later, but in the meantime I am happy to know that I can start to work in both directions at the same time, something I encourage my clients to do. Create the new system or start the new habit NOW, and, at the same time, work backwards to clear up whatever's been piling up until now. Many of your new systems will be born out of your piles, and you can function so much more easily when your current stuff, whether it's clothing or paper, is easy to find.

You'll also be training yourself in the all-important art of maintenance, or, as I like to call it, flow. This is another piece at the heart of creating and living in a space you love, and I hope to welcome it into my life with joy.